Barring something truly earthshaking warranting a separate post, I’ll be updating the Herman Cain story today in this post.
The NY Times reports that one of Cain’s accusers received a year’s severance, $35,000, but that there were issues in addition to Cain that made her uncomfortable working at the National Restaurant Association:
Four people with contemporaneous knowledge of the encounter said it had taken place in the context of a work outing during which there had been heavy drinking — a hallmark, they said, of outings with an organization that represents the hospitality industry. They spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid being publicly drawn into the dispute, and declined to provide details of the encounter, saying they did not want to violate the privacy of the woman.
Two of them said that other factors had been involved in her severance, and that other workplace issues had been making her unhappy at the association as well. But they said the encounter with Mr. Cain had added an emotional charge and contributed to the size of her payment. One former colleague familiar with the details said such a severance was not common, especially for an employee with the woman’s relatively short tenure and her pay grade
Some people are acting like a $35,000 severance payment is a big deal. Trust me, it’s not. It’s less than the cost of defense of a case, and it avoids distractions and publicity which even a weak or false claim can bring. Some large companies will fight these claims even if the cost of defense exceeds a possible settlement, because the company wants to send a message to the workforce that you can’t just make a claim and get a check. But most smaller companies, and certainly a trade organization which needs good publicity, will settle quickly and quietly. I read nothing incriminating into a $35,000 severance agreement with an employee who also had other gripes with the company in addition to the as-yet unspecified issue with Herman Cain.
One of the accusers, not clear if it’s the woman referenced in The Times article, also wants to go public. I agree with Robert Stacy McCain, get it all out there.
The way Politico dribbled out the story, admittedly holding back facts and sources, was meant to keep the issue alive and keep Cain in the headlines as long as possible. In fact, I’ll go one step further and say that Politico structured the story in such a way that the accusers would be outed and come forward, with Politico receiving the glory for the scoop but not the blame for causing the women to breach their confidentiality agreements.
Updates: Let’s hope this is not true, Oklahoma Consultant Claims He Witnessed Cain Harassment (h/t @CharlieSykes):
Oklahoma political consultant Chris Wilson says if the woman behind the reported sexual harassment complaint against GOP Presidential hopeful Herman Cain is allowed to speak publicly, it’ll be the end of Cain’s run for the White House.
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Comments
Shouldn’t the women have to repay the money they received if they want the NRA to waive the agreements?
(I’m sure there will be plenty of volunteers to pay the money on their behalf in exchange for exclusive interviews.)
I’d hazard a guess that the women are counting on being able to make mega bucks by taking Cain down.
I doubt the Association would ever ask for their money back given the negative PR it would involve.
It is the same reason these cases are almost always settled in the first place.
Bah. Nothing but a spurious distraction. I’ve had “settlements” made for calling a useless employee “useless.” Even had one minor one for telling an employee of another office to kiss my backside in more graphic terms.
There’s no reason to think this was anything other than a shakedown by clever employment discrimination lawyer on behalf of a woman who was having trouble at her job, probably figured she was going to get fired sooner or later, and seized the initiative by ginning up allegations of a “hostile workplace.” The NRA probably was happy to pay $35k to get rid of her. At worst, it sounds like she took offense at something Cain said, or some gesture he made; but there’s no indication that Cain actually did anything bad.
Understand, I don’t really think Cain is qualified to be president and I have particular concerns about the way he seems to improvise responses to questions on subjects he apparently has given no serious thought to. However, in this instance, he’s getting a bum rap simply because people hear “sexual harassment” and assume it means he’s some kind of deviant predator.
Really, Conrad? And you were make privy to the documents on this issue when?
I’m not saying I know this is what happened. I’m saying, based on what has come out, there is no reason to think this is anything MORE than what I’ve described. It COULD be more, but there is no reason at this point to think so. All we know is that there was a CLAIM involving “sexual harassment” with apparently no “overt” sexual conduct (just “gesturing” that made two women “uncomfortable”), which went away with the payment of $35k (at least in one case).
Prof Jacobson is handling the PR on this story better than Cain and his campaign (and Cain had the advantage of knowing all the facts in advance). At this point, I’ll write-in Bill Jacobson for POTUS. Cain is proving that as a candidate, he’s prone to self-inflicted wounds — it’s naive to think this won’t continue if he were President.
“and Cain had the advantage of knowing all the facts in advance”
Actually, he likely didn’t. He wouldn’t have been involved in the settlement, and it *was* nearly 20 years ago.
Crawford, how do you square that Cain told Greta that his lawyers were keeping him involved in the negotiations with her lawyers? He knew she was asking for a lot of money (so he says) and he said that his lawyers told him that it was not going to be as bad as they thought and that she was given a 3, maybe 2, months “settlement” to go away. Those were his words, not mine.
Although Cain may not have been involved in the negotiations and the settlement, he was clearly on top of the issue the whole time.
And are you telling me if someone accused you of wrongdoing that could have not only destroyed your career, but your marriage and reputation as well, that you would not remember that 12 years (since it was in 1999) later? That dog won’t hunt, no matter how hard Professor Jacobson tries to defend Cain.
And yes, a year’s salary is a lot of money if the woman had only been at NRA a very short time. It was equal to an entire year’s salary. You don’t give “severence” pay to people who get fired, which is what Cain inferred.
It is completely unsurprising that a CEO in Cain’s position would be kept apprised of the general status of negotiations but not know the amount involved in the final resolution – at the time and years later.
The amount paid is NOT a large amount, no matter how much you want it to be so. Settlements in this range are driven by the costs of defense, which would have been far more than $35,000. People experienced in this area understand that a complainant who took $35,000 to settle a claim against a CEO probably didn’t have much of a case.
The fact that she accepted this amount means that the claim was almost certainly not career and marriage threatening – if it had been, the price tag wouldn’t have been so low.
Ah, but Smoke, Cain admitted that his lawyers kept him informed on the Greta show. Are you saying he lied and wasn’t really informed as the negotiations were being conducted? If that is the case, he had a bunch of lousy lawyers who failed to keep their client briefed on the continuing negotiations.
Exactly the type of bad faith response I expected from you.
Defense of Herman is noble, but a candidate has to do opposition research on himself. Rather than play “What did the candidate know, and when did he know it?” we can certainly agree that this type of story is a potential embarrassment that top tier candidates should ferret out of their past ahead of time. The problem isn’t the story, the problem is Cain’s inability to address it effectively. See http://hotair.com/archives/2011/10/31/cain-in-my-opinion-i-did-nothing-inappropriate/ and http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=D36513C8-EDC0-4B14-937B-17065BDC4B84. Maybe the upshot is that Herman should have had Bill Jacobson as his spokesman from the start.
Team Cain hasn’t handled this well at all. It will just have to play out. I think the Campaign FEC problem with Block’s American Prosperity contributions is serious.
Both Cain & Perry were hit over the weekend. Perry with that stupid edited video mashup of his NH speech (Which earned him a standing ovation from the audience at cornerstone) So that people were discussing whether he was drunk..and Herman Cain in the opp dump Sunday night.
Who does this help?
Hmmmmm….
“Based on a suggestion from a local blogger to look into political donors on the Board of Directors of the National Restaurant Association for potential ties to presidential campaigns, I have attempted to identify anyone privy to inside information about the National Restaurant Association who also has recent ties to any presidential campaign.
According to the October 2011 FEC report for ROMNEY FOR PRESIDENT INC. a gentlemen named Steven C. Anderson gave $1,000.00 on July 14, 2011. FEC search function here.
Steven C. Anderson is the same gentlemen who took over the helm as Chief Executive Officer at the National Restaurant Association (after a brief intermission) upon Herman Cain’s departure in 1999. As CEO it is highly likely he would have been privy to details of litigation and threats about litigation from the immediately previous tenure of Herman Cain.”
http://northernvirginialawyer.blogspot.com/2011/11/former-president-of-national-restaurant.html
Sunday morning Perry did a great interview on his campaign reboot on Fox News Sunday (The same morning Will’s WAPO article on Romney is published)
Monday morning Cain is going to AEI to talk about his 999 plan.
So what are people taking about on Monday?
Cain’s sex harassment charges & Was Perry drunk in New Hampshire?
As much as I think the underlying story is being overhyped, I would rather something like this come out now than a month before the election. How Cain deals with this provides some useful insight into what kind of candidate he’d make in the general. So, yeah, shoot the messenger, but you may eventually be grateful to hear what he had to say.
Agreed. Everyone is rushing to either defend or attack Cain, when none of us know what really happened. Its one thing to object to the way the story has been handled (which I do), its another to assume there couldn’t possibly be fire under this little bit of smoke. How about we all take a step back and see how this plays out rather than tying ourselves to opinions that, as of yet, we can’t support? If its true, we need to know it. It doesn’t matter how a democrat would be treated, because our guys aren’t ever going to be treated that way- so get over it. If its false, then its a weapon that probably can’t be used again in the future.
True or not, this matter is better dealt with now than down the road. And like I said yesterday, it gives us an opportunity to see how Cain and his team handle an attack. I hope he sees a few more, because if we nominate a man who’s never run a campaign in his life, he’s going to need all the practice he can get.
Well said Cowboy.
You want to add to the speculation?
Romney is avoiding doing one-on-one interviews. Why?
The FEC questions about Cain’s Campaign are serious ones.
“Bill Allison, editorial director at the Washington-based Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group that tracks political money, said the transactions deserve scrutiny.
“All candidates publish books and they offer them as premiums to donors, but most candidates aren’t buying them from their own companies,” he said. “It raises the question of his campaign contributions ending up in his own pocket.”
Although his autobiography was published by a division of Simon & Schuster Inc., Cain paid Stockbridge, Georgia-based T.H.E New Voice Inc. $36,511 for books. His campaign spent $4 million through Sept. 30, including more than $64,000 paid to his motivational speaking company for airfare, lodging and supplies, as well as the books.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-18/cain-used-campaign-funds-to-buy-autobiography.html
This blog has been doggin’ Mark Block on this issue since the summer.
” For GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, the questions far outnumber the answers.
Mark Block, chief of staff for the Cain campaign, announced the campaign was hiring an investigator to check out claims that a private Wisconsin-based firm owned and run by Block and his No. 2 picked up the tab for as much as $40,000 in campaign expenses for the Cain campaign earlier this year.
“We’ve retained independent counsel to look at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story and report back to us,” Block said Tuesday at a Washington, D.C., media event.
A reporter for ABC News continued to pursue the issue, asking the former Wisconsin political operative a couple of follow-up questions, including one about his role in the matter.
“Why don’t we talk about the campaign going forward?” Block asked.
That’s not the only question he ducked…”
http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/noquarter/cain-campaign-launches-internal-investigation-133046088.html
With regards to the 35K “agreement/settlement” in numbers it isn’t big money but a years salary for someone who wasn’t on the job very long is kinda a lot to pay to make them “go away” or a least it looks that way.
Guess this will play out and I think someone needs to tell Anne Coulter to shutup…This isn’t helping.
“”I mean that’s why our blacks are so much better than their blacks. To become a black Republican you don’t just roll into it, you’re not just going with the flow. You have fought against probably your family, probably your neighbors, you have thought everything out. And that’s why we have very impressive blacks in our party.”
This as opposed to Obama, who Coulter says “is half black, and is not a descendant of the blacks that suffered these Jim Crow laws…I am not contesting that he was born in America or anything, but he is the son of a Kenyan not the son of American blacks that went through the American experience.”
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/ann-coulter-herman-cain-obama-hannity-2011-11#ixzz1cYz8zFX3
”I mean that’s why our blacks are so much better than their blacks….” – Coulter
Yeah…that made my jaw drop but then again I’m from the south (Texas) where a conservative would be laughed out of the room for saying that out loud…
(And she is a fierce critic of Gov. Rick Perry’s articulation…go figure)
*sigh*
A couple of things that need to be answered:
1) Did the accuser file a claim with the EEOC?
2) If so, did the EEOC investigate?
3) Did Cain help in that investigation?
4) what were the EEOC findings?
5) How did the accuser substantiate her accusations? Any witnesses? what was the evidence?
6) how many claims of sexual harassment did the NRA settle before Cain began his tenure at the NRA?
7) How many claims of sexual harassment did the NRA have after Cain left the NRA?
8) Is the NRA in the habit of paying claims where no evidence exists?
Jennifer Rubin also raises some questions:
So he never asked what happened to the accusation?
No one ever told him about confidentiality obligations?
He never got confirmation that he would be absolved of any personal liability?
He never asked the NRA how the claim got resolved?
Cain never had to sign a settlement agreement or any other document;
He trusted the NRA to obtain a complete release on his behalf, and the women never demanded that Cain release potential counterclaims (e.g., for defamation)?
He never agreed to keep the matter confidential?
In his role as CEO, Cain never had to approve a settlement, was never told the cost of the settlement and never saw a budget entry confirming a settlement?
From the moment these accusations began, I thought the best course of action was to let this all play out. This was a battle between Cain and The Politico story. Rushing to defend Cain before facts are known and questions answered only create hysteria and false narratives. Cain did not do himself many favors by attacking the accusers and accusations.
Some of us political junkies remember Gary Hart in 1984. He denied accusations he was ‘playing around’ and dared the media to prove the allegations. It did not take long before Donna Rice and Monkey Business became synonomous. There are many similarities between this story and Gary Hart. IIRC, Hart was the Democrat frontrunner having just won NH primary before the allegations surfaced.
Let all the questions be answered and let all the facts be put on the table. It is your move Herman Cain; do you want the accusers to remain silent behind their confidentiality agreement or do you want full disclosure?
I see no similarities between this story and Gary Hart’s sex scandal. First of all, there’s a big difference between a married candidate’s actually, knowingly carrying on a sexual relationship with a young blonde (not his wife), during a presidential campaign and a candidate’s having once been accused of merely saying something “inappropriate” in the workplace a dozen or so years ago. (a) It’s an accusation, not a fact; and (b) you can’t possibly compare just SAYING some workplace-inappropriate thing to a woman to actually having sex with somebody. There’s a huge degree of difference between those two things.
Also, you say you remember the Donna Rice/”Monkey Business” scandal, but you’ve somehow forgotten that it happened in 1988, not 1984, the year Hart won the NH primary.
What difference does it matter if the adves were accepted or rebuked? The action on the part of the aggressor is still there.
Now, tell us when you were made privy to the NRA documents that have convinced you Cain is telling the truth. Because without the actual document, you are just speculating in favor of Cain.
“What difference does it matter if the adves were accepted or rebuked? The action on the part of the aggressor is still there.”
I keep reading this over and over trying to make sense of it. “Adves”?
As for the rest of your comment, I already addressed it above.
I am so ready for this to just go away. Cain tell the accusers they can lay it all out there so we can see what went on and finally move on. I can’t believe Cain put his foot in his mouth again yesterday in an interview on China and whether they had nukes.This foreign policy gaffe is much more significant, I guess he’s lucky that the non-sex scandal is covering that for him. Is he really trying to implode his own campaign?
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/11/01/cain-on-china-theyre-trying-to-develop-nuclear-capability/
Cain seems to be either a serial flip-flopper o some issues or Gaffetastic…But maybe that’s part of his “charm”
He totally lost me with the “Fried Mexican Fence” joke that sometimes isn’t a joke.
Anybody that thinks that will fly in the general is kidding themselves…The GOP will not win against Obama unless they can split the fastest growing voting block. Those folks will not vote for either Cain or Romney. In fact the leader of the largest GOP Latino Organization has QUIT the GOP Party claiming the GOP Party has left him.
By focusing on Border Security & Jobs,Budget (Issues that unite all Americans) Gov. Perry is probably the only candidate with a record and a clear plan that can split that vote effectively and win the general election. That is a long range strategy and Perry is effectively getting the message out in town halls and media interviews.
Shamefull indeed of Politico but, politics is a contact sport and it is played for keeps.
Professor, since you are my appointed overseer of Liberty’s legal wing and, by virtue of such a lofty honor, my Chief Esquire – no need to thank me – I understand – thus, I defer to your insight to aid me in formulating our unofficial, official legal position concerning this matter. 😉 Welcome to Freedonia!!
(Disclaimer: I am a Cain supporter.) I agree with your analyis and Cain’s campaign should answer all reasonable questions and move on. There is still a long way to go to unseat Obama – regardless of who gets the nomination.
All Media is entertainment. NEVER forget that.It is produced for money and acclaim and the more eyeballs that see it or want to see it is the goal.
This means that truth or fairness to the subject is far down on a list of goals involved in the production of the event.
This definitely includes books, movies, audio, tv, tv news, public events etc.
Our elections and politics are part of this MEDIA SPECTACLE arena. Which is one reason they appear as cage matches, circuses or on occasion; farces.
The event or process may have a declared motivating goal other than entertainment but until that goal is reached it’s importance or the extent of the public’s involvement turns it into a SPECTACLE and fair game for exploitation.
This means that many who have NO INVOLVEMENT with or desire to advance the goals of the event are intimately involved with it’s production OR manage to manipulate the event to generate money or influence for themselves.
To give ANYONE involved, other than the principals and their hirees whose actions show them to be mainly concerned with the acquisition of the goal of the event, any other motives is foolish and naive. And even some of those that appear to only be involved in the goal of an event are actually only involved for future remuneration and publicity.
Once one steps outside of the perception of elections as a holy and sacrosanct political process that is the be all and end all of and the ultimate expression of our representative government then and only then can the blood pressure be gotten under control and the appearance of charlatans and mountebanks be placed in the correct perspective and dismissed as unjust or just or fair or unfair or pertinent or not to the participants in the event.
It’s part of the process and because so many professionals are involved these days, sometimes it seems choreographed and the lesser associated events, parades and displays can be predicted with ease by even a novice observer.
It’s all theater folks. Relax and enjoy it. To do otherwise invites a stroke or an aneurysm.
Cheers! As they say.
@Spartan
Rubin is a Romney hack…nuff said
Herman Cain hasn’t been to either NH or Iowa in 30 days to capitalize on his surge in the polls. He’s doing free media which hurts him as much as it helps him & touring the south & DC?
You guys took the bait. Poison’s working already.
We’ve gone from examining the candidates in the context of who can best beat Obama… to viewing our candidates through their lens. They’ve effectively hijacked our primary. And the more you guys talk about Cain’s ‘poor’ response to this staged crisis, you inadvertently become the remote hand of the enemy.
And it shows with the likes of Workingclass Artist and Mark30339. In addition to voluntarily cultivating the ‘Cain is possibly a sexual harasser and misogynists’… they are are now helping to propagate a new ‘Cain possibly a money launderer’ meme.
“” For GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, the questions far outnumber the answers.
No. As with Palin, the saboteurs far outnumber the good guys.
Aucturian, Cain has admitted he was accused of misconduct. Do you not think it is now his responsibility to prove that the claims were “baseless” as he has?
And yes, Cain seems to have some campaign donation problems. Internal investigation by the Team Cain? Is that like the “internal investigation” into Fast and Furious by the Obama administration?
Give me a break. Do you really think American voters are THAT stupid?
You nailed it!
It’s easy to succumb to the democrat attack machine as they will stoop to any level to fabricate the most sordid material possible.
I’ll continue to support Cain because I truly believe that he’s the one to do real problem solving.
But twisting people’s words and positions as you are doing is OK?
Attempting to find out the truth is bad?
Didn’t the last election teach you anything?
Liberty, while everyone knows that I am not a Cain supporter, I am also not a supporter of the politics of personal destruction. That was tried on Rick Perry over a rock, and unfortunately, your chosen candidate played right into the left wing medias hands with his “insensitive” comments. He should have kept his mouth shut until he had all the facts. But he didn’t and instead, played the race card, which Professor Jacobson chose to ignore.
None of us know what really happened between Cain and those two women, but I do know that the onus is on Cain to prove the claims were “baseless.” What bothers me is that he went on Greta slamming one of the women. Why do that if he wants to retain his “good guy” persona? He made himself look like every other slug who has ever fired a woman because she refused him with the excuse “She was a bad employee.”
One of the women’s lawyers is asking not just to have his client released from the confidentiality clause (he claims Cain has already broken the terms of the agreement by giving information about the issue) but he wants all the documents released. When does Cain agree to that? If he doesn’t agree to that, what is he hiding? Why is he lawyering up over this, saying he has to talk to his lawyers first before he considers asking the NRA to release the documentation? If he is telling the truth, the documents would substantiate what Cain has been saying.
I am sick to death of taking heads thinking they know what happened and defending Cain when they should be saying the same thing that Perry said; wait until all the information comes out. Perry has ever reason to slam Cain, but he didn’t. Maybe Cain has now learned what a true gentlemen acts like, not making pre-judgements, one way or the other, like Cain did over a rock.
The Cain supporters, with each passing day, are beginning to sound like Clinton supporters who said there was no “there” there, only for us to find out that Clinton was a skirt changing slug.
Great…so now I’m like “…a Clinton Supporter”.
If you are really “…not a supporter of the politics of personal destruction.” and “..is sick to death of taking heads thinking they know what happened and defending Cain …”; than why the veiled-verdict with your preceding paragraph about Cain’s lawyering up over the ‘documents’.
aucturian, I am going to give you credit for being an intelligent person. That said, if you are being honest aboout an issue, you don’t have to “lawyer up.”
Cain needs to instruct the NRA to release all the documentation. If he doens’t, he is only going to look like he is trying to hide something. Sunlight is always the best disinfectant.
I don’t know who is telling the truth; Cain or the women. But I sure want to know. If it is Cain, he will only benefit from this scandal. If the women are telling the truth, his goose is cooked. I suspect it is the latter you fear.
Now, perhaps you can tell me on what you base your blind trust that Cain is behing truthful and honest about what happened when it is well known that his story changed and evolved over a 24 hour period?
And yes, if you are going on nothing but what Cain himself has said, you are no differnt that the Clinton supporters who based their opinion of his dalliances on what Clinton said. That knife cuts both ways.
My “…blind trust…” is the inverse to your blind presumption of Cain’s ‘guilt’ based on your unquestioning endorsement + presumed veracity of a story-bomb delivered from a media complex that’s dedicated to destroying our chance of unseating Obama.
I can laugh off being insulted as a clinton-like supporter. But did someone just break Reagan’s 11th rule when he casually+derisively compare a Conservative candidate with a Democratic adulterer?
Aucturian, you are temping my patience. I never said Cain was “guilty.” I said the he made the claim the accusations were “baseless.” That puts the onus on Cain to prove it.
What about “I don’t know who is telling the truth: Cain or the women.” that you have trouble comprehending?
Do I need to get you some crayons?
Because he’s a Perry sycophant who delights in attacking other candidates while whining about “vitriol” whenever Perry’s conduct is questioned.
You know, the type who makes a crack about “lawyering up” while his guy is ducking debates.
Smoke, you sound like you are projecting.
If you want to attack someone, get your facts right. Cain did say he could not speak until he confirred with his lawyers — that is known as “lawyering up.”
Perry expressed his opinion that the debates are not productive — he did not say he would not participate in them. So he is dodging nothing.
So I have two questions:
If Perry participates in future debates, can we expect a public apology from you?
If not, why not?
Aucturian: you often make some good points, but you really screwed up here.
Asking that the truth be ascertained is not the same as saying someone is guilty — why did you take it that way?
What reason would you have for not wanting the truth to come out? Do you think Cain is guilty? Pease explain.
What’s up with the crack about being a Clinton supporter? You took that personally — why? Who accused you of that?
Your response on the whole is irrationally defensive — why?
WaPo reports now that one of the women is not so keen on release from non-disclosure. Seems she is a federal employee whose husband is a Republican and a registered lobbyist!
This is no surprise. Anyone who once worked at one DC-based trade group is highly likely to be enmeshed in the political-media-lobbying-legal permanent Washington establishment.
One has to symparhize that Ms. X and her hubby may not want to endanger their careers by going down a road that could lead them to trouble.
On the other hand, how hard could it be for Ms. X’s Republican lobbyist husband to have shared her story with someone who passed it along to Politico?
By coincidence, a small business owner who was the target of a pair of sexual harassment lawsuits called the Mark Levin show last night. That caller specifically mentioned $35k as being the average cost to “open the briefcase,” i.e., just to begin any legal defense. His company (like most?) was insured against his sort of thing and the insurance company suggested offering the $35k figure as the preferred alternative to fighting the allegations.
Audio is here, starting at the 55:00 mark:
http://tinyurl.com/688hjen
A point that seems to be getting lost here is that even being GUILTY of “sexual harassment” is not necessarily a sign of moral turpitude. Thanks to aggressive lawyers and PC-minded bureaucrats, the workplace is now supposed to completely free of the kind of casual sexual banter that people freely entertain outside the workplace context. So, if you’re in a supervisory position and the filter between your brain and your mouth happens to go on the blink for just a moment, in the presence of a litigious, dissatisifed underling, you could well find yourself on the receiving end of a sexual harassment complaint.
As a hypothetical example, Cain COULD have passed by this women’s office and said something like, “Damn, you really look good in tight clothes,” then kept walking to his own office, not giving the woman a second thought. Without question, the woman and her lawyer could have made out a sexual harassment claim out of that. And it’s undoubtedly “inappropriate” according to the now-prevalent standard that HR directors have adopted for the American workplace (in large part BECAUSE of the specter of litigation). So Cain would have been guilty of “sexual harassment” in this hypothetical. But I would contend that he hasn’t done anything morally wrong. It isn’t a bad thing to appreciate that the woman looks good in tight clothing. SAYING so is, at worst, a minor, probably unthinking breach of decorum. And, objectively speaking, it’s hardly something that the woman should find cripplingly insulting. Needless to say, it doesn’t involve touching or any physical imposition, nor any demands, quid pro quos, or threats (again, in my hypothetical). Yet, it’s more than enough for him to be tagged with the crime “sexual harassment.”
In this case, we don’t even know that Cain even said that much. We are given to understand he said (or gestured) something that a women CLAIMED made her uncomfortable. As I said above, there could be a lot more to this, but in many, many cases, even committing “sexual harassment,” as that term is used in the modern American legal parlance, shouldn’t be enough to disqualify someone from the presidency if they are otherwise of decent character.
To kick the equine corpse once more:
Just because the media reports a lot of BS stories about republicans does not mean every story about republicans is BS.
I doubt Cain did anything wrong. But I don’t know the man, and neither do you. And while I’m inclined think he’s innocent, I wouldn’t put any money on it. Why? Because I don’t know the man, and neither do you!
None of us knows what happened, at least not yet. Lets not go sticking our neck out for the guy until we have some more information. This sort of stuff can usually be discounted in presidential races because the candidate has a long political career and his past has been sifted through ad nausium by political opponents. Cain has no such career, so we have no ideas what skeletons might be in his closet.
If the story is BS, it won’t hurt him, and will more than likely help him. If its true, then thank God its coming out now and not after he’s won a bunch of primaries. Lets all just take a deep breath, relax, and see what facts develop.
I’m so sick of hearing about how the big bad media is so much tougher on Republican candidates than they ever were on Clinton, Jackson, Edwards, etc. Who cares? Its irrelevant in campaign season. As Mr. Rumsfeld said (well, close), you go to war with the media you’ve got, not the media you want. The rules are unfair- boo hoo, get over it. Its the field we currently have to play on. Sure it sucks, but it is what it is. So lets see how Mr. Cain does, and if he can hold up with these referees. I don’t think he can, not because he’s guilty, but because he’s learning Political 101 on the fly in a doctorate level game. And as the campaign progresses, things are only going to get tougher. Much tougher.
Forget this personal loyalty crap. Be it to Palin, Cain, Perry, or whoever. These are politicians. We are trying to win an election, not anoint a savior, not elect a best friend. You look over the field, pick the horse you think is most likely to win, and move on from there. Policy positions are great, but you know what? Policy doesn’t mean a thing unless you win. A well principled loss is no more valuable than an unprincipled one. I hate to sound so mercenary, but dang it, the future of our country is at stake this time around.
But that’s just me.
(For the record, I like Perry, but I’m not saying this because I think it helps Rick- a few solid debate performances are all that’s going to get his ship righted.)
Ya, know — all that critical thinking can get you into a lot of trouble.
Take it from me — I know.
[…] accounts of anonymous “people with contemporaneous knowledge.” However, we can consult Cornell University Law Professor William Jacobson:Some people are acting like a $35,000 severance payment is a big deal. Trust me, it’s not. […]
The Professor should correct me if I am mistaken, but I thought most “confidentiality agreements” are signed with the understanding that the person “accused” does not actually admit to any wrongdoing.
So, Cain would not have to ADMIT to, or even be found to have done anything wrong, because there would be no finding of “wrongdoing” or “guilt” or what have you – as part of the agreement to a fast cash settlement.
Harassment cases are not that easy to bring. Twelve years ago they were a bit different than now, and I think each state has specific rules as to what qualifies. Most attorneys don’t want to touch them unless you have credible witnesses who are willing to go on record.
[…] a $35,000 severance is no biggie, and not evidence of guilt. Back when Erick Erickson was a lawyer, he handled several sexual […]